If You Were Put In Charge Of Killing Poverty...

[Aemeth]

What would you do?

How would you network?

Basically, this is self explanatory...I'm curious...

I have some ideas but I am short of time for now...I will post later...

[AYHJA]

This question depends on a couple of things...

1. What kind of poverty are we killing...?
2. In general or relative..?
3. Why and or for what reason..?

[footballdude]

just kill all the poor people :p

[Brains]

1. insanely tax riches (both persons and companies)
2. provide a very well funded safety net for poors, so that they can quit working-just-to-piece-the-ends-together and start working to save money and buy their own houses
3. outlaw lobbying
4. outlaw being able to get elected if you have interests in business: sit on a board, have a high position in private companies, have had your complete carreer in business, even - have too many business friends would lead to your non-election in politics, see (3). a separation between politics and business, like we (should) have between church and politics.

that would be some initial things popping into me' brains.

[raum]

I would attack poverty by attacking crime, or rather the .

Plain and simple, I would arrange for countries we send support to to accept our citizens who commit crimes that are legal there.

For example:
Get caught with a little kid - straight trip to Thailand.
Beat your wife - go the Phillipines.
Get caught with pot, can you say va-cay in Amsterdam?
Get caught with heroin, Indonesia is waiting for you...

but to be honest, drugs would no longer be legal, but a regulated market.

But say:

Get caught with drugs or some non-deadly crime - go to some little country where what you did is not wrong. You go to some foreign and potentially underdeveloped country, where you serve your sentence, and decide if that criminal activity is worth no longer being American. If you decide to defect, fine. It would cost us about 200 dollars a week to care for 6 prisoners in Prague.

If you elect to come back and find yourself in trouble again, your citizenship is under review.

and to answer the obvious questions, criminally insane and killers of women and children are put to death, and killers of other male adults have a choice to join a peace corp in a DANGEROUS country (like Burma, San Leone, or Darfur), or be executed. After and during serving for 10 years in the peace corp, they are reviewed and either executed (if they have a terminal disease, or a bad conduct situation), allowed to stay in the peace corp, or if their conduct is exemplary, offer a chance to enlist in the Military, and become a free man, of military citizenship, which prevents them from coming back into America without orders to do so.

A pregnant women convicted of murder (not killing in self defense) is treated as a hospitalized prisoner, until the child is born. The child stays, and the mother appoints an adoptive parent or guardian, or the child goes to a foster home. If the mother is still alive, she is allowed to communicate with the child, and can apply for visits to the country where she serves, and at the age of 13 can petition to live there, if the mother is free.

Jail shouldn't be a picnic, nor an industry. Even with such a severe system, no more people would undeserevedly be executed as happens now. You don't jail people for life, and you have prisoners in contact with cultures and elements humans need to feel alive. The funds we save will be used to house the homeless who are willing to work until they can support themselves. The rest are evaulated for mental and physical health. Non criminal members of the homeless community are assigned to a foreign domestic peace corp until they establish means of self-sustenance.

No country ANYWHERE gets ANY money or help without a presence of the military (if armed force is neccesary) or civil peace corp. If you NEED our money, and want OUR help, you clearly have an ineffective social model, and need some support to your countries' infrastructure. We will gladly help you build it up, and help train your natives, and provide support to those countries that want to operate in the SPIRIT (not the same government model) of America, toward a common prosperity.

In my world, you would think DAMN hard before crossing the law... but you would have to act with real malice to invoke it, and then damn the torpedos. You wanna be a thug ghost-faced killer... wait till you are fighting for your life in burma with a garden hoe because the local gang is trying to make sure the village you are in is buying their food. but would still have a purpose if you were incompatible for American society, comparable with American ideals. In fact, if you truly have a noble soul, as you lay dying from automatic gunfire, you might look at your rake, and think back to the meal you just ate with locals who ate fresh food for the first time in months. If, like so many prisoners, you truly "found Jesus", you would be proud of that life far more than a life wasted in a solitary cell.

[Brains]

waw, what an aggressive view on the matter.

attack poverty by attacking crime. so you would allow multi-nationals to employ people on minimum wage without social security?

what would you do with one of these employees who needs to be hospitalized or who has a family member needing to do so. let him rot until he steals to pay the bill and then "put him in the peace corps" because he did so?!

also and not to be annoying, but don't think everyone wants to be like America. while only a decennium ago you would have found LOTS looking up to America - including me - I think ever since 9/11, that has quite drastically changed.

[raum]

waw, what an aggressive view on the matter.

attack poverty by attacking crime. so you would allow multi-nationals to employ people on minimum wage without social security?

Those who serve for nondeadly violent countries go there, they work there. How much they make is up to them. Negotiating your wage is your business. Your rights to be in America are suspended. You get to go to a visiting nation, and they issue you get a stipend according to the cost of living in that country, and a work permit, your employer pays your income to the us govt, who treats it as "international earnings" which have specific guidances for social security and tax treament. After your sentence is served, they deduct your cost of living from your income, and give you the balance, and pay the interest into the health and comfort of the prisoners, and to create effective crime prevention strategies that will clarify penalties of illegal activity as part of the education system.

what would you do with one of these employees who needs to be hospitalized or who has a family member needing to do so. let him rot until he steals to pay the bill and then "put him in the peace corps" because he did so?!

for the "banished civil criminal at large", the embassy is there. Also, a crime has to be abit more extreme than stealing for America to be able to interfere with another country's legal system, unwarranted. As I said before, he has a living wage, a means for investment, and a RELATIVE freedom where his specific actions are actually accepted! Surely this beats rotting in a prison.

for the "conscripted rehabilitation corps" there are professionals who must pass medical certification by World Health Organization standards. In fact, a truly redeemed prisoner serving a life sentence is capable of seeking employement in the military (generally, infantry or artillery) or in the American Conscripted Labor Corps. These people have a wage they are paid, which is used to sustain their relative health and comfort. Their wages are minimal, because THEY ARE IN PRISON. Those who "graduate" in the military or in the ACLS have the right to REQUEST liberty at intervals not interfering with their duties. Those who have not passed in review in ten years, must stay in, or are executed. The severity of this will demonstrate ONCE AND FOR ALL, whether the human condition can accept the horrid reality of the death sentence.

The person has the right to petition the embassy of the country for anything a citizen of the US does. The only thing they cannot be helped with, is re-entry to the states before your time is served.

also and not to be annoying, but don't think everyone wants to be like America. while only a decennium ago you would have found LOTS looking up to America - including me - I think ever since 9/11, that has quite drastically changed.[/quote]

I never said "make them the way America is". I said "i will not give you support, unless you help me make that support make you SELF-SUPPORTING. If that means military, medical, civil, or political reform. And that is why I said "in the spirit of" america; A civil responsibility that results in life liberty and the pursuit of happiness for the individual.

[Aemeth]

Hmm...Interesting Raum...I will post soon I promise...

[Brains]

waw, what an aggressive view on the matter.

attack poverty by attacking crime. so you would allow multi-nationals to employ people on minimum wage without social security?

Those who serve for nondeadly violent countries go there, they work there. How much they make is up to them. Negotiating your wage is your business. Your rights to be in America are suspended. You get to go to a visiting nation, and they issue you get a stipend according to the cost of living in that country, and a work permit, your employer pays your income to the us govt, who treats it as "international earnings" which have specific guidances for social security and tax treament. After your sentence is served, they deduct your cost of living from your income, and give you the balance, and pay the interest into the health and comfort of the prisoners, and to create effective crime prevention strategies that will clarify penalties of illegal activity as part of the education system.

err... you just suppose the other country accepts the American "criminals" then?

and... I still do not see how that fights poverty. I do see how that would reduce the load on your overpopulated prisons (IF the other countries accept at all).

for the "banished civil criminal at large", the embassy is there. Also, a crime has to be abit more extreme than stealing for America to be able to interfere with another country's legal system, unwarranted.

not at all clear from your first post where you mentioend that smoking pot buys you a ticket to amsterdam.

As I said before, he has a living wage, a means for investment, and a RELATIVE freedom where his specific actions are actually accepted! Surely this beats rotting in a prison.

for the "conscripted rehabilitation corps" there are professionals who must pass medical certification by World Health Organization standards. In fact, a truly redeemed prisoner serving a life sentence is capable of seeking employement in the military (generally, infantry or artillery) or in the American Conscripted Labor Corps. These people have a wage they are paid, which is used to sustain their relative health and comfort. Their wages are minimal, because THEY ARE IN PRISON.

I am getting confused: we are talking about killing poverty, NOT about reducing the number of prisoners.

Those who "graduate" in the military or in the ACLS have the right to REQUEST liberty at intervals not interfering with their duties. Those who have not passed in review in ten years, must stay in, or are executed. The severity of this will demonstrate ONCE AND FOR ALL, whether the human condition can accept the horrid reality of the death sentence.

a violent way to attack crime, again I do not see the connection with poverty.

[raum]

Brains: As always, thank you for your counterpoint. I truly enjoy our interchange.

Here is in short my proposal, simplified. Look and see how easy it makes sense.

I choose to FIRST address crime because crime is the child of poverty. A criminal has little to look forward to other than more crime, or poverty. Obviously, the current criminal justice system is flawed, as we will invest 47,000 DOLLARS into keeping a criminal in jail, and there are entire families in the US that do not make 47,000 DOLLARS a year working and living within the confines of legal and acceptable behavior. With the money we save, consolidating foreign aid and criminal punishment, we can have the funds to truly address the root of crime, which is either: a.) a value system or behavior that is illegal in America, or b.) poverty and lack of education. Some people say one leads to the other, but I think it is arbitrary to try and prove it.

1. Send people where their nonviolent criminal actions are legal. This makes sense. If someone wants to take a course of action in life, and it includes things that are not legal by American standards, but it IS legal in another country. Send them there on a basis of their right to visit another country. Arrange for them to work (as a contractor) for the U.S. govt. in programs that are funded by the dollars we contribute to that country. Let them see if they like it, and if they can get a legal permit to work in that country, and decide to stay - GREAT! One more person in the world found a place where they fit in. If their time is served and they want to come back, let them, with the understanding that if they are caught again, they go to a less desireable place. This also will help curb the rate of immigration, and work to build social networks across the world.

2. Execute people on Death Row who have no fruther chance of appeal. See how it really feels. Let the weight of that crime be felt on those who levy it on a criminal, not just locked away. Make the rule; three appeals or six months, whichever comes first. Make the judge, attorneys, and jurors stand witness. Far too many people have an opinion about the death penalty who have no experience with seeing the loss of human life. Unfortunately, some people will be persecuted though they are innocent. That is as unfortunate as the fact that people are rotting in jail who are innocent. But ONCE AND FOR ALL, see what the weight of the execution of a human being is, en masse, and see if it belongs in our Justice system, according to the consent of the People through their governing bodies. Personally, I think the People will abolish the Death Penalty once they are faced with what it really entails.

3. Institute a Foreign Legion, with a peaceful purpose. It is the ultimate sentence, and the places you go are not desirable. The Foreign Legion was proven to be the most effective way of dealing with people who purport violent crimes. Bring it back and bring it to American justice system. My proposal, however, is that we instead of making them warriors, make them laborers who help build up the places of the world where we keep sending dollars, but with no direction. If a country will not allow us to assist us with the support they need, they APPLY for imclusion to a limited budget of unassisted support. They have to prove they have an effective infrastructure of their own, and provide detailed budgets for the dollars they request.

4. Should someone join the Foreign Legion have a crime that was previously punishable by death, they will be in for life. Should it be what used to be a life sentence - it will be 20 years or Age 40 which ever comes first, and they can then apply to retire out of America into another country *if they are accepted*, or they can petition to serve in the military, pending a full review of individual military personnel with no personal knowledge of the applicant. Make it clear to the applicant: Those who are found guilty of insubordination are dealt with as according a code of penal justice that includes death. Their life as an American citizen is over, but they still have their life to give to the country they have thus offended. They can forsake it, or apply it to their penance.

So, in a nutshell, that is my proposal: It is not my own personal opinion of right and wrong, and like all systems; it is by no means perfect, and full of potential for corruption. However, I suspect the impact on our country woud be far more positive than what we have.